Behold, I was shapen
in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. (Psa 51:5 [Heb: v. 7]
Commenting on the authors of the Hebrew
Bible and their understanding of the female “contribution” to the traits of
offspring, Cynthia R. Chapman (associate professor of biblical studies at
Oberlin College) wrote the following, which has important ramifications for understanding
Psa 51:5 and whether it is teaching “original sin”:
While many biblical texts
present sons as the “seeds” of their father, they do not associate paternal
seed with the transmission of physical, ethnic, or character traits. Instead, a
father transmits his name, his house, his land, and his monument to his seed. Throughout
the ancestral narratives in Genesis, when the word “seed” designates a human
offspring, it is associated with the covenantal promises transmitted from
father to son (Gen 13:15, 16; 15:5, 13; 17:7, 8, 10; 21:13 [Ishmael]; 22:17;
26:3, 4, 24; 28:4, 13, 14; 32:13; 35:12; 48:11). Outside of Genesis, covenantal
promises continue to bind men and their seeds, alluding to the covenant of
circumcision (Deut 30:6), the covenant between David and Jonathan and their
seeds (1 Sam 20:42), the covenant of an eternal dynasty that Yahweh promises to
David and his seed (2 Sam 7:12), and the commandments and “name” associated
with covenantal observance among the seeds of the house of Jacob (Isa
48:17-19). The covenant promises bestow on a son a father’s material and
immaterial wealth—“a great name,” a “blessing,” “land,” and “protection”—all of
which are values within an idealized patrilineality. Therefore, while the word “seed”
is important to the ideal of patrilineality, it is not used in reference to the
transmission of physical or character traits from father to child.
Delaney and Speiser
overemphasize the importance of the male seed in the biblical understanding of
procreation, and fail to see those places where mothers are presented as contributing
to the physical, ethnic, or character composition of their children. Naomi
Steinberg is correct in her assertion that a mother’s ethnicity determined
whether her son became his father’s designated heir. In Genesis, a man’s mother
and wife had to come from the line of Terah in order for him to receive the
covenantal blessing (Naomi Steinberg, Kinship and Marriage in Genesis: A Household
Economics Perspective [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993], 1-11, 95-100; Tammi J.
Schneider, Mothers of Promise: Women in the Book of Genesis [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2008], 16). Coming from the line of Terah does
not simply mean that these women were good quality “containers”; they
contributed something of themselves and their Terahite ethnicity to the child
who was eventually named heir.
Several biblical
texts provide evidence for the Hebrew understanding of cognatic descent. In the
story of Jacob’s and Esau’s birth, for example, each twin is tied to one parent
based on his physical appearance; the hairy Esau is tied to the masculinity of
his father, Issac, while the smooth Jacob is tied to the femininity of his
mother, Rebekah (Gen 25:25-26; 27:11). Joseph seems to have inherited physical
beauty from his mother. Several texts, both literal and metaphorical, locate
the formation of negative character traits within a mother’s womb. Job
complains concerning the wicked: “They conceive trouble and give birth to evil;
their womb fashions deceit” (Job 15:35). The psalmist laments, “Look, I was
brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51:5), and
the Qumran psalm cited above asserts humans are “encompassed by iniquity since
birth and since the breast by guilt” (4Q507,2). None of these texts insists
that evil, guilt, iniquity, and deceit are the only possible products fashioned
in the space of the womb, but they connect the traits of a mother to the child
she births. They locate the formation of character traits in the female-focused
reproductive process that moves from conception to pregnancy to birth.
Additional texts
present the mother as the source of negative personality traits in the child,
but they do not identify the womb as the site of transmission for these traits.
These mothers are thought to teach iniquity rather than having it fashioned in
their wombs. The metaphorical Mother Jerusalem, for example, is described as
learning husband- and children-loathing from her Hittite mother (Ezek
16:44-47). Uterine sisters Oholah and Oholibah are introduced as “two women,
the daughters of one mother,” in a text that describes how each led a life of
whoredom from her youth (Ezek 23:2). Saul curses his son Jonathan for colluding
with David, saying, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know
that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of
your mother’s nakedness?” (1 Sam 20:30). In this text, Saul traces Jonathan’s
traitorous behavior against him to the rebellious nature of his mother. Again,
there is no specific mention of the womb. Finally, Ahaziah’s reign is
introduced as follows: “Ahaziah was forty-two years old when he began to reign;
he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah, a granddaughter
of Omri. He also walked in the ways of the house of Ahab, for his mother was
his counsellor in doing wickedly” (2 Chron 22:2-3). In both sets of texts—womb-focused
and mother-focused—we find a transmission of traits from mother to child,
sometimes occurring within the womb and sometimes occurring under the mother’s
active instruction. While none makes the transmission of traits from mother to
child through the womb explicit, together they suggest that a mother’s womb was
more than a container for a man’s trait-bearing seed.
Biblical Hebrew
understands a mother to contribute to the physical, ethnic, and character
makeup of her child from the time spent in the womb and at the breasts to the
time spent under her active tutelage. A mother’s womb served as the basis for a
lifelong bond between mother and child and among siblings who came forth from
the same womb. This womb-based connection could be expressed through the word raḥāmim,
meaning a womb-centered allegiance that involved lifelong mutual protection. (Cynthia
R. Chapman, The House of the Mother: The Social Roles of Maternal Kin in
Biblical Hebrew Narrative and Poetry [New Haven: Yale University Press,
2016], 122-24)
For those interested, 4Q507, the text from
Qumran quoted in part in the above, reads as follows:
Frag. 1 1 … […] … […] … […] 2 But we are in sin from the womb, and from the
breast, in gu[ilt …] 3 And while we exist, our steps are with
impurity …
[…]
Frag. 2 1 […] all the […] 2 [… Bl]essed be the Lord […] 3 […] Blank […] 4 […]
… […]
Frag. 3 1 […] … [Bl]essed be the L[ord …] 2 […] everlasting [gene]rations.
Amen. Amen. […] 3 […] … Rem[ember, Lord, that …] (Dead Sea Scrolls
Study Edition, eds. Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar
[Leiden: Brill, 1997], 1021)
The above ties into what Mitchell Dahood
and